The Medicine-men of the Apache

In this richly illustrated anthropological study, John G. Bourke examines Apache medicine-men as healers, ritual specialists, and guardians of secret knowledge whose influence shaped Apache life and resistance to outside change. Drawing on firsthand observation and wide comparison with Indigenous and ancient cultures, he focuses on their organization, authority, sacred objects, and ceremonial paraphernalia—powders, cords, amulets, headdresses, and ritual spaces—while tracing striking parallels to the Zuñi, Navajo, Mohave, Aztecs, Egyptians, Israelites, Greeks, and others. The book follows the making of a medicine-man through dreams, fasting, vigils, and solitary journeys to cliffs and mountain peaks, and explores how sanctity, sanctuary, and social power gather around these figures. It also surveys rain-making, trance, intoxicants such as tobacco, black drink, wisoccan, and datura, and dramatic feats of seeming invulnerability, spirit-conjuring, and animal transformation. At once skeptical and fascinated, Bourke reveals a world where prestige, ordeal, heredity, and mystery define spiritual authority. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.